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Comment by jaxmurr | Hacker News Reader

> That's not how restraining orders work, it generally applies to things like direct death threats or physical altercations.

So, actual harassment?

> Instead she fired him from her startup, is that so unreasonable?

I think this is where the mentor talked about "karma biting back." She had these facts beforehand:

1) Mark is socially-inept and an asshole

2) Mark invested time and energy into the project

3) there were no legal contracts

Is "firing" Mark (with no "smoking gun" event/email) and expecting him to bend over so reasonable? This really seems like IP theft with the OP hiding behind "harassment."

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There are many things which aren't death threats or physical altercations which are harassment.

I would certainly feel uncomfortable receiving those messages in the situation as described in the article.

Mark volunteered time into a project. Let's frame this as an open source project where you can also volunteer.

* Person X is in charge of a group and has an idea for a coding project

* Person Y decides to volunteer some coding time

* Person X, with full authority to do so ends, the purely voluntary relationship

* Person Y now decides that they are a co-founder and has equal rights and starts demanding compensation for the project that doesn't exist but could potentially exist in the future. They also continue to fire off emails becoming more demanding after it's made clear that the relationship has been terminated.

Were this an open source project people would think what the contributor is doing is insane. That's clearly harassment. If I fire someone on a Friday and they show up on a Monday saying that they have a right to the company's future earnings and oh, by the way, do you want this t-shirt I made about the company, I'm going to call the police.

When joining an opensource project, there is a license and you - as contributor - are transferring the IP ownership from you to the project through the license agreement. Following that, you can kick off anyone at any time from a project. However, that someone can fork the project and continue on his own. Even in for-profit projects, this happen: see the Arduino's drama as an example.

If you and I have started a project together, and I haven't signed an IP ownership transfer (to you, the project, the company) - I am entitled to the full ownership of the intellectual rights of my work. Regardless if I get paid or not (even when I get paid, every company will ask you to sign a separate agreement where you transfer ownership of produced IP). So if I get "fired" - and I haven't signed any agreement - you are in trouble. Because from now on, /your/ project IP will always have the legal liability that at some point I can come back and claim it's mine. See Facebook and many other cases, where they worked on a project without clear initial paperwork - it's a very expensive mistake.

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